Your business is becoming increasingly hyperconnected with employees, customers, devices and ideas constantly communicating across diverse networks — from the IoT and cloud to the coffee shop Wifi down the street. Shouldn’t your security toolset be just as hyperconnected?

It's said that by 2020, the number of mobile users worldwide will reach an unprecedented 5.5 billion, up from 4.8 billion in 2015. During the same timeframe, the number of connected devices is projected to grow even faster — from 18.2 billion to 50.1 billion.

Such a huge upswing in the number of users and devices collecting, sharing and delivering information across your network requires organizations to retool their network; and also, revisit their ideas about network security.

Old Network Security Rules Don’t Work In New, Hyperconnected Environments

In today’s hyperconnected businesses, the old rules for implementing network security – adding firewalls at the network edge or special-purpose sensors to specific network segments – simply don’t work. What’s needed is a security solution that is as interconnected, automated and collaborative as the network itself. Enter intent-based security.

Part of Fortinet’s Security Fabric architecture, intent-based security automatically translates business requirements into synchronized security actions and policies — without IT having to worry about the intricacies of the underlying security toolset. Every security tool in the fabric – even those from third-party vendors – automatically communicates and collaborates with the others.

In doing so, the Security Fabric embeds security into the network, end-to-end. As the network grows more complex and hyperconnected, intent-based security helps to both simplify and improve security at the same time.

How Intent-Based Security Works

Fortinet’s Security Fabric works in concert with the Fortinet FortiOS security operating system to deliver collaborative, centralized, end-to-end intent-based network security through:

• Complete IT awareness: With open application program interfaces (APIs), every security element (Fortinet or third-party) communicates and collaborates with every other in the fabric and is monitored and controlled from a single pane of glass. If one tool identifies a threat, any indicators of compromise (IoCs) can be instantly propagated to every other tool, ensuring even zero-day attacks are mitigated quickly and efficiently.
• Expanded visibility: Fortinet’s intent-based security encompasses its entire range of security solutions from endpoints and next-generation firewalls to switches, wireless access points, analyzers and even sandbox solutions. The result it true end-to-end visibility across every security solution in the network.
• Simple controls: FortiOS offers a simple-yet-powerful user interface that provides clear network topology visualizations and enhanced interactive views across auditing, logging and reporting. It gives your IT staffers complete intent-based control, enabling them to easily and efficiently modify the network’s security posture in real time.
• Proactive recommendations: Leveraging an organization’s current security profiles and any changes made along the way, FortiOS provides proactive recommendations to improve compliance and network security effectiveness.
• Scalability: From IoT to the cloud and from physical to virtual or hybrid infrastructure, intent-based security scales to protect the entire attack surface — no matter an organization’s size, network topology, technology portfolio or vertical.

A partner of Fortinet, Resilient can get you on the path to intent-based network security. We have the expertise to ensure you have the right security tools, visibility and control in place to keep your hyperconnected business efficient, secure and successful. Learn more.